WordPress: Add featured image to RSS feed

I’m a firm believer in minimising the amount of plugins a WordPress site uses and instead making code changes to get what you need. This removes the overall bloat of a site and makes things far easier to manage. From time to time I come across useful plugins, but instead of using them I work out the quickest way to achieve the same goal by coding it myself. Here’s a simple function I use to show a post’s featured image in the RSS feed (something WordPress does not do by default):

View this gist on GitHub

Just paste that code into your theme’s functions.php file and you’re good to go. You can obviously modify the style attribute to have it display however you wish, as well as the image size (set to ‘medium’ in this example) – the options for this are: thumb, thumbnail, medium, large & post-thumbnail.

54 responses to “WordPress: Add featured image to RSS feed”

Gary

September 20, 2012 at 5:59 pm

Hi,
Just used your snippet on a clients website. Worked a treat. Thank you.

Reply
1. Hugh Lashbrooke
  
  September 20, 2012 at 7:53 pm
  
  I’m glad it helped 🙂
  
  Reply
2. Suresh Khanal
  
  April 16, 2016 at 4:09 pm
  
  It was really a headache to see the RSS-to-email campaigns without no images because the RSS feed did not have the necessary tag to pull images from. Anyway, changed the functions.php file and now MailChimp can pull the required components and now the emails look beautiful.
  
  However, still the images in RSS feed look really big and wish to resize them to a suitable size. Needs to search more and find a solution for this.
  
  Reply
Javi

October 13, 2012 at 12:24 pm

Hi,
I did what you said in my wordpress blog and it did not work. There are lots of people looking for this feature and I do not want to install a plugin at all.

I have two function files functions.php and theme-functions.php and I tried already in both.

I am not seeing the images in your feed neither… Hope you can enlighten me

Thanks

Reply
1. Hugh Lashbrooke
  
  October 24, 2012 at 8:08 am
  
  Hi Javi,
  
  The code itself should work fine if you paste it into your theme’s functions.php file in the root folder for the theme. If it’s not working for you then make sure you are setting your featured image correctly (using the WP featured image and not your theme’s custom image setting).
  
  Since changing some things on my site I have removed the images from my feed – I’ll put them back sometime, but for now you won’t see them there.
  
  Hugh
  
  Reply
AR

May 8, 2013 at 1:40 am

I have been trying to give an image to RSS I include on my WP blog. However, it always results in failure. your recent writing I am reading now works well, unfortunately I am not so familiar with coding or something similar. could you please provide me with something simpler instead?

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1. Hugh Lashbrooke
  
  May 8, 2013 at 7:24 am
  
  I have tested this code again in the latest version of WordPress and it works correctly as it is now – I can’t really provide you with anything simpler as this is about as simple as you can get for this kind of thing.
  
  Reply
Victor Lava

May 8, 2013 at 5:04 pm

Worked like a charm. Thanks for a code share! 🙂

Reply
Camp Trend

May 23, 2013 at 7:08 pm

Thanks so much, works perfect!!

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Nghia

May 31, 2013 at 4:47 pm

I pasted the code into my function.php but when i view my RSS source, i dont see any images to my items. I’m using the WP featured image function of WP (running latest version); What am i doing wrong?

Reply
8 Things Every WordPress Developer Should Know | Tips

June 4, 2013 at 2:33 pm

[…] Source: WordPress: Add featured image to RSS feed/ […]

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Pratish

June 24, 2013 at 3:42 pm

Thanks for this Hugh – needed it for a cartoon blog I am running and relieved at the thought of not having to add in another plugin! I’m curious to know if there is any way of overlaying some message on the thumbnail in the feed (e.g. click on cartoon to view full image on the site) – or even if I could insert the message under the featured image in the feed itself it would be great… any suggestions please?

Thanks again!

Reply
1. Hugh Lashbrooke
  
  June 24, 2013 at 5:32 pm
  
  Hi Pratish – the $output variable merely contains the HTML of the tag, so all you would need to do is add more text/HTML onto the beginning or end of that variable and it will show up as you have defined it. You have the global $post variable available so you can use that to display any dynamic post data you want at this point.
  
  Reply
  1. Pratish
    
    July 19, 2013 at 8:46 am
    
    Thanks for the reply Hugh – sorry, I’m bit of a newbie so need a bit more help on this please. I’ve also been trying to get the thumbnail in the RSS feed to link to the actual post (so RSS readers can click on the image to see the full cartoon on the website). I’m honestly not sure how to tailor these two lines to include the “a href” to achieve this:
    
    $output = get_the_post_thumbnail( $post->ID, 'medium', array( 'style' => 'float:right; margin:0 10px 10px 0;' ) ); $content = $output . $content;
    
    Reply
    1. Hugh Lashbrooke
      
      July 19, 2013 at 10:21 am
      
      Hi Pratish,
      
      You could modify that code to look something like the code at this link: http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=LGQFYXks
      
      I haven’t tested that code specifically, but it should wrap the image in a link to the post.
      
      Reply
      1. Pratish
        
        July 19, 2013 at 7:06 pm
        
        Thanks for the Hugh – I tried it out and it crashed my feed… managed to fix it though :). The working code, including the link to the post from the thumbnail should read:
        
        $output = get_the_post_thumbnail( $post->ID, 'medium', array( 'style' => 'float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;' ) ); $output = 'ID ) . '">' . $output . ''; $content = $output . $content;
      2. Pratish
        
        July 19, 2013 at 7:08 pm
        
        Oops sorry I thought using the code tags would allow me to write the href too – I can send you the code if you’d like to update it. Basically the rel=”nofollow” bit in your pastebin thing was in the wrong place so it didn’t work.
      3. Hugh Lashbrooke
        
        July 19, 2013 at 7:11 pm
        
        Not sure how that rel=”nofollow” bit got in there – wasn’t supposed to be. Glad you got things working!
      4. Jose
        
        March 24, 2014 at 10:19 pm
        
        Pratish, Hugh,
        
        Thanks for sharing the solution… was thinking of how to link the image itself. Though not sure if I got it right: http://d.pr/n/2idb
        
        Appreciate your look at it…
8 Wordpress Tricks A Developer Must Know | Create Website in Minutes

July 11, 2013 at 4:34 pm

[…] Source: WordPress: Add featured image to RSS feed/ […]

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Lanaya | Raising Reagan

July 18, 2013 at 4:16 pm

Hi Hugh …

I’ve added the code to my php and it still doesn’t work. I have added all kinds of suggestions to the code, yours had a slight variation that I was hoping would fix the problem. I am SO baffled because I can’t think of anything else to do.
I don’t know if it’s something in my overall Feedburner that isn’t picking it up?

I would really love your expertise. I can send you anything you need to look at it.

Thank you so much.
Lanaya
http://raising-reagan.com

Reply
1. Reid
  
  July 19, 2013 at 6:58 pm
  
  Is there a logical progression from this snippet that would put the featured image in its own tag in the RSS feed (outside of the content). It would be nice to lead with the featured image, then display the title, date, then content.
  
  Any thoughts?
  
  I understand it would require editing the feed-rss2.php file in some way right?
  
  Reply
  1. Hugh Lashbrooke
    
    July 19, 2013 at 7:42 pm
    
    To get the image above the content all you’ll need to do is remove the CSS from this snippet, so just remove this code: “, array( ‘style’ => ‘float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;’ )”. If you’re using the image as a header image then you may also want to change the size from ‘medium’ to ‘large’ (or any other custom size defined by your theme/plugins). That won’t get it above the title and date though – you’re right in thinking that you will have to modify the RSS template for that.
    
    Reply
2. Hugh Lashbrooke
  
  July 19, 2013 at 7:11 pm
  
  If you’re using Feedburner then the issue most likely that Feedburner is caching your feed and it will only refresh the new content at some point in the future. Other than that there’s no reason why this snippet wouldn’t work.
  
  Reply
George

July 27, 2013 at 8:54 pm

Thanks for sharing this! I have an odd related question: would it be possible to add code that includes the URL to the featured image, but doesn’t display it on the visible feed item?

I am looking to pull the Featured Image URL from each of my posts via the RSS feed, and display that image — hyperlinked to the related post — on a separate website. Basically I want to display thumbnails for current posts from the blog on the sidebar of my art portfolio (the art portfolio site is not a WP site, it’s a hand-coded site).

Since my posts already have the same image used for the Featured Image inserted into the body of the post, adding your code results in posts with the image included twice. Is there a way to include the Featured Image URL “behind the scenes”, so it is included in the RSS XML code, but not displayed to the viewer?

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Nimrod

August 11, 2013 at 2:42 pm

This is a very handy snippet! ..But I’m using a purchased theme so I prefer to use it as a plugin to avoid having to keep track of which files I have to check after an update of the theme. I also used to hard code changes directly into my theme files but I find it very messy when I have to update to the latest versions..

Reply
1. Hugh Lashbrooke
  
  October 11, 2013 at 1:14 pm
  
  You should always be using child themes to prevent issues when updating your theme. More info on that here: http://codex.wordpress.org/Child_Themes
  
  Reply
Kenin Bassart

August 21, 2013 at 8:20 pm

Hi, I had a quick question for you. I am trying to implement this solution to include the featured image in the post when there is only a snippet of the feed being used. When I view the full post in the feed my images render fine, but I would like the snippet feed to show a picture first, then the first few lines of text. Is this possible?

Reply
1. Hugh Lashbrooke
  
  October 11, 2013 at 1:20 pm
  
  You should be able to achieve this by replacing ‘the_content’ with ‘the_excerpt’ in the add_filter() call, but I haven’t tested that to be sure.
  
  Reply
mywebprogrammer.com

October 11, 2013 at 1:08 pm

Good plugin but doesn’t enable you to style the featured image in your RSS feed. Can’t change the size of the featured image.

Reply
1. Hugh Lashbrooke
  
  October 11, 2013 at 1:19 pm
  
  Well this isn’t really a plugin – it’s just a code snippet that you should edit yourself to suit your needs. You should never just copy and paste other people’s code snippets without seeing if you can customise it for your use case. Besides, you’re wrong about not being able to style the image – you can use any CSS you like in the ‘style’ parameter inside the get_the_post_thumbnail() function to do this.
  
  Reply
  1. Trude
    
    November 12, 2013 at 10:37 pm
    
    Hi, and thanks for a great explanation about rss feeds and images. You say one should add the code in the theme’s functions.php file. I have never done this kind of code editing before but I have read that one should do changes in the child theme. Is this correct?
    
    Reply
Melody

March 10, 2014 at 7:55 pm

I’ve input the code into my Child Theme Functions.php and I still can’t get the images to pull in my RSS feed. Any other suggestions?

Reply
Gerald@wpcustoms

March 19, 2014 at 6:32 pm

Have you tried using the_content_feed instead of the_content as the filter?

Reply
1. Hugh Lashbrooke
  
  March 20, 2014 at 10:06 am
  
  That would actually be a great improvement to this – I wrote this snippet some time ago and I think it definitely needs an upgrade. I’ll implement that sometime soon 🙂
  
  Reply
ayan

August 9, 2014 at 11:33 am

Hello all here, I have a wordpress blog and I tried to use this code but it is not working correctly, Can you guide me what version of wordpress is needed for this to work.

Reply
Mohammed Gritli

August 12, 2014 at 3:48 pm

dear,
thank you for this function , but, am building an rss iOS app, how can i get the image link so i can add it to my app

Reply
ashley

October 13, 2014 at 5:00 pm

thank you. just added. very helpful!

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Michael Mooney

October 18, 2014 at 3:55 am

I just used your code as I am using our sites xml feed in our new business app I’m building and it works very nicely.

It’s a very nice, clean bit of coding.

Thanks for sharing ;D

Reply
Rick Nelson

October 30, 2014 at 9:34 pm

Just used the code
Been looking for something like this
Thank you so much Hugh

Reply
Nivi Morales

November 14, 2014 at 1:43 pm

Hello!
I extended your snippet a little bit to add a default image if the user has not set up one.

function featured_image_in_feed( $content ) {
$default_thumb = get_bloginfo(‘stylesheet_directory’).’/images/warks-news.png’;
global $post;
if( is_feed() ) {
if ( has_post_thumbnail( $post->ID ) ){
$output = get_the_post_thumbnail( $post->ID, ‘medium’, array( ‘style’ => ‘width:290px; height:auto; float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;’ ) );
$content = $output . $content;
} else {
$output = ”;
$content = $output . $content;
}

}
return $content;
}

add_filter( ‘the_content’, ‘featured_image_in_feed’ );

Super useful. Thank you! 🙂

Reply
Dave Iannone

November 25, 2014 at 7:22 am

Anyone have a snippet that would put the Featured Image as a SEPARATE component of the RSS feed, not integrated into the content block? For example URL of Featured Image

Reply
Jenn

December 21, 2014 at 3:30 pm

Got this working very easily.

I was originally going to use a plugin, but it was incompatible with the Feedburner plugin. Adding the snippet above to the functions.php file works beautifully. Thank you!

Reply
Martin

January 11, 2015 at 7:14 pm

Thanks, this has been bugging me for ages!

Reply
Techniblogic

January 31, 2015 at 1:17 pm

Finally , I found the Way , How to Add Featured Image in WordPress RSS Feed ?

Reply
Dave

February 12, 2015 at 1:33 am

Thanks for posting this. I tried pasting the code into my functions.php file in the theme root directory, however it just crashes my website and I have to re-upload the original file in order to get the website back up again. Any ideas?

Reply
1. Alex
  
  March 5, 2015 at 3:37 pm
  
  Dave, you must pasta only this:
  add_filter( ‘the_content’, ‘featured_image_in_feed’ );
  function featured_image_in_feed( $content ) {
  global $post;
  if( is_feed() ) {
  if ( has_post_thumbnail( $post->ID ) ){
  $output = get_the_post_thumbnail( $post->ID, ‘medium’, array( ‘style’ => ‘float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;’ ) );
  $content = $output . $content;
  }
  }
  return $content;
  }
  
  without
  
  Reply
Damian

March 23, 2015 at 9:24 am

Hello Hugh,

I have 2 questions… I also have a MyBB forum and it pulls the feed. I’m using your code so an image will be included. How can I center the image above the excerpt?

And, how can I add social links under the excerpts, Example Facebook etc… I see this done with some feeds and can’t figure how to get it done.

Regards

Reply
Schalk

May 12, 2015 at 5:29 pm

Hi Hugh, trust your well!

Anyway to modify your feed function to include the price of woocommerce products to the product feed?

Dankie
Schalk

Reply
Schalk

May 13, 2015 at 10:36 am

Hi Hugh, manage the price part, somehow.
Problem is the price is part of content, so I can’t style it.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/pf5znskv4to1szu/woocommerce-product-feed.png?dl=0

Lekker dag,

Reply
Paknode

July 1, 2015 at 9:41 pm

Your snippet is working great, an I am sure you will update it according to new versions of wordpress. We all need such creative persons like you who can give us some thing to cheer about. Also wordpress blog platform are the best on this planet.

Reply
techtutorialsbd

July 14, 2015 at 3:03 pm

Thank you for sharing this article -Add featured image to RSS feed .

Reply
Bolkya Resha

September 14, 2016 at 10:03 am

I tried same for my site http://www.bolkyaresha.net but rss feed not showing images,plz help

Reply
Hasna

November 6, 2017 at 5:59 am

Hi Hugh,

I’m a noob in wp or coding. I just came here when searching for featured image broken in IFTTT recipe. I’m very interested to apply this code in my functions… And it makes me noticed, that (maybe) something wrong with my feed at all. It just shown the Unicode in the browser when I typed /feed.

Could you help me? Thank so much.
sepatumoo.com/feed
This is the problem I faced and googled for a while.

Reply